Winemaker Notes
Blend: 98% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Malbec
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The straight 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon (there’s 2% Malbec in the blend) comes from Walla Walla Valley and was brought up in 85% new French oak. This opaque purple-colored beauty offers terrific black currant and cassis-like fruit intermixed with classic tobacco leaf, damp earth, and crushed flower aromas and flavors. Rich, full-bodied, and elegant, with a seamless texture that carries plenty of sweet tannins, give bottles 2-4 years in the cellar and it's going to keep for another 15-20 years. It's a beautiful, impeccably made wine.
Rating: 94+ -
James Suckling
Fresh ferment-derived meaty notes with spicy oak across cassis, mulberries, fresh herbs and blue plums. The palate has a medium body and flavors of bright cassis fruit in approachable style. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is a blend of fruit from estate sites McQueen, Bob Healey and Lefore along with Pepper Bridge. The aromas draw you into the glass, with notes of high cacao chocolate, spice, bay leaf, dried flower, cassis, raspberry, herb and cherry, showing pleasing complexities. The blackcurrant, cherry and spice flavors coat the palate, bringing a sense of richness but still restraint and vibrancy
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Wine Spectator
Shows precision and presence, with expressive blackberry, tobacco and espresso accents that build richness and structure toward broad-shouldered tannins. Drink now through 2026.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
Responsible for some of Washington’s most highly acclaimed wines, the Walla Walla Valley has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years and is home to both historic wineries and younger, up-and-coming producers.
The Walla Walla Valley, a Native American name meaning “many waters,” is located in southeastern Washington; part of the appellation actually extends into Oregon. Soils here are well-drained, sandy loess over Missoula Flood deposits and fractured basalt.
It is a region perfectly suited to Rhône-inspired Syrahs, distinguished by savory notes of red berry, black olive, smoke and fresh earth. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot create a range of styles from smooth and supple to robust and well-structured. White varieties are rare but some producers blend Sauvignon Blanc with Sémillon, resulting in a rich and round style, and plantings of Viognier, while minimal, are often quite successful.
Of note within Walla Walla, is one new and very peculiar appellation, called the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. This is the only AVA in the U.S. whose boundaries are totally defined by the soil type. Soils here look a bit like those in the acclaimed Rhône region of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but are large, ancient, basalt cobblestones. These stones work in the same way as they do in Chateauneuf, absorbing and then radiating the sun's heat up to enhance the ripening of grape clusters. The Rocks District is within the part of Walla Walla that spills over into Oregon and naturally excels in the production of Rhône varieties like Syrah, as well as the Bordeaux varieties.